Railroad insurance. Now there’s something that most people don’t think about very often. To the average American, the railroad is something from the old west. Of course the truth is that after a couple hundred years, we still haven’t figured out a better way to get a whole bunch of stuff across the country quickly than the railroad. Trains and tracks are as relevant in 2016 as they were in 1916, still the backbone of the North American economies, and still the most beautiful way to see the country.
With advances in technology, trains are safer than ever, but, the risks have, if anything, become greater. If a truck turns over on the highway, you lose a truckload of product. In a train accident, you may lose several miles worth of product and millions of dollars in equipment. In other words, while a major railroad crisis is less common now than it was a hundred years ago, it’s still going to be too expensive for anyone but King Midas to pay for out of pocket. There aren’t a lot of minor disasters in the railroad business, and there aren’t a lot of inexpensive ones, either.
Although the public generally doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the train industry when everything goes right, it seems like they can’t think about anything else when something goes wrong. A disaster resulting from a defective part will have people on Facebook and Twitter speculating and debating as to who’s really to blame on this one and proudly declaring that this is why they choose to drive everywhere. It’s for this reason that you won’t meet a lot of railroad professionals who don’t have a crisis management expense reimbursement provision in their policy along with railroad protective liability and rail servicing liability. When you have a fender bender in your private vehicle, nobody needs to know about it but you, the other driver, and your insurance companies. When something goes wrong on the track, a lot of time, effort and money goes into protecting your reputation in the public eye.
While people tend to think of the railroad industry as something of a relic, the truth is that few professionals put as much time and effort into pushing their technological boundaries as those who run trains for a living. With the tremendous risks and liabilities that come with railroads, the ceaseless push for safer, smarter ways of transporting cargo is absolutely vital.
